[Andy Sjostrom]

aramp! Welcome as a registered user! Your comments and thoughts are very well put. I agree with most of what you say.
The mathematics of my post are quite easy to agree on. First, the Pocket PC license is less than $20. How much less depends on each OEMs licensing agreement. But since $20 is an easy figure to use we'll stick to it.
$20 is 4% of $500. So, from a consumer perspective, $20 of my money goes to Microsoft. From an OEM perspective it is a different story. Assume they get 50% ($250). Then $20 is 8%. I don't think that is unreasonable that the actual software that the user uses costs as much as, for example the memory.

I also don't think "one million or two" takes anyone anywhere in terms putting together a solid, commercial operating system for mobile devices. Add to that the costs involved in staying on top of all the rapid changes in this market...

I think your analysis why people would choose Linux makes sense and your 10% assumption does not sound unreasonable either.

Thanks for contributing!

[Andy Sjostrom]

aramp! Welcome as a registered user! Your comments and thoughts are very well put. I agree with most of what you say.
The mathematics of my post are quite easy to agree on. First, the Pocket PC license is less than $20. How much less depends on each OEMs licensing agreement. But since $20 is an easy figure to use we'll stick to it.
$20 is 4% of $500. So, from a consumer perspective, $20 of my money goes to Microsoft. From an OEM perspective it is a different story. Assume they get 50% ($250). Then $20 is 8%. I don't think that is unreasonable that the actual software that the user uses costs as much as, for example the memory.

I also don't think "one million or two" takes anyone anywhere in terms putting together a solid, commercial operating system for mobile devices. Add to that the costs involved in staying on top of all the rapid changes in this market...

I think your analysis why people would choose Linux makes sense and your 10% assumption does not sound unreasonable either.

Thanks for contributing!

[gorkon280]

Originally Posted by szamot

There is still support for 8 - Track but so what. Linux needs to pick its battles, I don't think this is one of them, at least not yet.

Why does it have to pick it's battles? Linux is not driven entirely by a corporate entity. It runs on nearly everything. It does not hurt Linux developers to develop a cool new app. It does not hurt folks who are porting the kernel to other processors. They are doing their work for free lots of times. What monetary cost is it costing if they want to do it? None. Companies who build the handhelds reap the benefits.

I do realize that some software just is not available for it (like mapping software.....only one that comes to mind but I am sure there's more). Now where I DO see Linux surviving in a handheld format more is in a situatuion where you must develop a custom app and use custom hardware to get the specific situation done. This case it's perfect for it and the cost of developing the software would be much cheaper. Also, just because the current product does not give grandma warm and cozies(face it...grandma still loves paper) does not mean it's useless or not relavant. Personally, I LIKE having Linux in the fray competing. Competition will drive innovation on all of the platforms. Just look at Palm. For a while, they were king of the heap. Palm OS stagnated. Microsoft came out with Pocket PC and then licensed it to Compaq....LOOK OUT! There came a juggernaut that forced Palm to not only improve the OS but improve the hardware (ie, no more dragonball processors). Granted, the 20 dollar licensing fee per device is not alot, but companies who develop Linux handhelds are not held back by Microsoft requirements. They can include any piece of hardware they want with NO corporate entity saying no you can't do that. Pocket PC has some specs you can't exceed like screen size (STILL 240 x 320) and Flashrom Being needed (although this is a good thing). Linux can do the same for Pocket PC. Also, when was the last time you actually picked a Zaurus up? ALmost everything you can do with a PPC can be accomplished on a Zaurus. It DOES sync with Windows. It's sync may not be as elegant as Hotsync, but how can it be any worse than Activestink!

To go on record, I LOVE my Pocket PC and even I agree that, for me, Linux on a handheld computer does not make sense. Add Mapping software and this changes . Even then, the hardware would have to have a hair more to appeal to me. How about built in wired ethernet as well as WiFi? I love my PPC, but I do not dismiss other platforms right away because you are looking through PPC colored glasses. Try to be objective about it before you dismiss it entirely.

[gorkon280]

Originally Posted by aroma

If you can license the Linux distro for say $5,

Try free. Except maybe SCO and as far as I know, they have not sold there embedded stuff to anyone yet for a handheld (SCO isn't in too good of shape with managers now thanks to their frivilous lawsuit against IBM) that is actually selling Linux for embedded devices (which would included handhelds). Even if there was (say Redhat), the only thing that would be restricted from use are non GPL'd parts of Red Hats codebase and there is not much in RedHat that is not GPL'd (some installation scripts and code and maybe a few other things like RHN). Also, RedHat does not really care if you buy Red Hat and install it on 500 machines. So, the OS cost for a 500 installations would be 50 bucks. Even then, you can always grab all of the GPL'd code you want and recompile, manipulate all you want (as long as you give the code back) to make it run on a handheld. ANYWAY, (sorry to go off on a tangent) if going with Linux saves you 2 million on a product line, you'd go with it. In the big picture of things, for a upstart, Linux is perfect for handheld use. I would rather them use that 20 bucks to develop apps to run on it or adding hardware(like a REAL microphone input). In any case, Linux can be viable on it and it should be worked on as long as folks are interested in it.

I also would like to point out that one of the most successful home av components out there now is the Tivo. It runs on Linux and grandma's use it. Linux CAN be made handheld friendly and can be made useful by mere mortals.

[aroma]

Originally Posted by gorkon280

Try free.

I still don't think your going to get it for free. If I (as an OEM) am going to use a commercially viable linux build on a handheld, I'm going to have two choices.
(a) Do the work my self and develop my own distro for the handheld.
(b) License someone elses work, such as QTopia.

If I go to someone who has done the work on a handheld distro and say and tell them I want to use it on 100,000 new devices, they're not going to let me get away with licensing one copy of their distro and then using that for all my devices.

- Aaron

[droppedd]

I also would like to point out that one of the most successful home av components out there now is the Tivo. It runs on Linux and grandma's use it. Linux CAN be made handheld friendly and can be made useful by mere mortals.

Tivo=/=handheld. Tivo is ONE product from one manufacturer that has little or no need to be able to install software or interact with other devices. Handhelds are another story; standardization is the lifeblood of the things, on a commercial level (as much as i love tweaking within those bounds with custom software).

That said, Linux embedded on some devices can be MUCH more stable than comparable windows systems. Example: the big old screen in Herald Square, NY above Macy's was down the other day with a windows Virtual Memory Error window on the screen 8O (i had a photo, but it got messed up on the stupid memory card... grrr.). But I think without a fully standardized version of linux for PDA (which would be counter to what the Linux folks here seem to think the benefits of it are) it's no good for PDAs. I use linux very often; it's the standard in my school for computer science. I just don't want it on my PDA anytime soon.

[jmarkevich]

Originally Posted by Andy Sjostrom

I don't. This article compares Pocket PC with Linux and says that using Linux would eliminate license costs. I say: if that's true, then you'll have to add investments costs around development, testing etc. Otherwise, you will need to license someone else's work.

Uhh. Then remove all reference to the word "cost". Don't worry, that's a subtle trap. Just pretend Linux is $50 and you can do whatever with it. More like buyng a company than buying a product.

Yes it does remove licensing costs. If you want to make a product, you ALWAYS have some measure of development and testing. You could also Pay the US$20 to MS for PPC, develop and test your value-added software without insight to the underside of the kernel (fake it with published APIs), then gripe and moan for YEARS AND YEARS about something Pocket Word.

Why does Pocket Word not have inter-paragraph spacing? Why does it keep changing back to the default font? Can I write a module to get it to read OpenOffice? If I had the code, I might be able to figure it out. But that freedom has been withheld from me.

[aramp]

Originally Posted by Andy Sjostrom

aramp! Welcome as a registered user! Your comments and thoughts are very well put. I agree with most of what you say.

Andy, thanks for a warm welcome. Actually I was reading the PocketPCThoughts for more than two years, but this is the first time I decided to take part.

Originally Posted by Andy Sjostrom

I also don't think "one million or two" takes anyone anywhere in terms putting together a solid, commercial operating system for mobile devices. Add to that the costs involved in staying on top of all the rapid changes in this market...

Right, but do not forget where these things are coming from. It's not Europe where the average programmer costs at least 100 000 EUR per year. It's not from US. It's from Asia. People there get moderate salaries. So $1-2 mln is a good chunk of money to do something big there and may stand for average of 30-40 man-years. Not bad, yeh... I know that from my own business experience. When it comes to US, I don't think it costs less for HP to adapt PocketPC OS received from MS to iPaq.

But the major question remaining is quality. Quality software development is still a challenge in most of the regions of the world. And when MS with its huge investments in QA and total quality management makes those annoying mistakes that become our nightmares, I can only guess what trouble are these Linux gadgets.